Promise Pegasus – (massive) price increase!

[jimthing]

Has anyone else noticed the recent price increase in the last couple of weeks on the Promise Pegasus R4 & R6 (new Thunderbolt) RAID enclosures with drives?

The Apple Store prices in UK£ (US$ prices are similar), then with increases:
• R4 4 TB (4 x 1 TB) was £750 => now £870 (£120/16% increase).
• R4 8 TB (4 x 2 TB) was £1100 => now £1350 (£250/23% increase).
• R6 6 TB (6 x 1 TB) was £1100 => now £1350 (£250/23% increase).
• R6 12 TB (6 x 2 TB) was £1400 => now £1900 (£500/36% increase).

Many of us thought the most tempting R6 12 TB unit was especially overpriced already, and expected them to offer the same unit with 18 TB [6 x 3 TB drives] for around the same/similar price eventually accordingly. OR even the enclosure by itself, would be much wanted.

I have read this may (if true, is it the only reason?) be because of the Thailand floods. But even so, how on earth can they justify over 35% price increases on units which were already expensive to start with??

Also, why do all of these Thunderbolt storage units only have TB ports, rather than most previous non-TB units which offer multiple connection types (USB 2, FW, eSATA, etc.)

Truly annoying?! Thoughts/ideas...

 

[visim91]

Thailand, yes.

Thunderbolt only, b/c USB, Firewire & the rest of the gang are made obsolete by - yep, you guessed it - Thunderbolt.
(They're trying to align this range of devices solely with Thunderbolt technology - a "pushing for the future" type move.

I would be more upset about the fact that there are only two Thunderbolt I/O.

 

[jtara]

There's been a massive price increase in bare drives, due to the supply shortage. Some computer manufacturers have even had to reduce production, because they can't get enough drives at any price to meet production demands. Some bare drive prices are up 100% or more over the past few months. The greatest price increase has been in the last month. I recently updated my Macbook drive and got in just under the wire, just after the price increases started. The price of that drive is already up 30% from when I bought it.

 

[jimthing]

re. price increases:
So the price increase is completely down to Thailand floods then, and nothing else?
Surely there are other production bases out there; is Thailand really that important that the whole market is having drive commodity prices go up (even as much as 100%, as one of you said) because of them?

If so, does anyone know the market analysts' views on how long would one would estimate before such things come down again — a month, up to 3 months, up to 6 months, longer?


re. ports/connections:
I understand this is the "future thing", but I still don't understand the premise of giving only one kind of connection, it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to the average user, and is even a deterrent to upgrading to it.

Say (like I do) you have an older unibody MBPro machine that comes with non-TBolt ports. Or you have one machine that has TBolt and another that doesn't. Or a backup machine that's a bit older and doesn't have TBolt.
In all of these cases, we're stuffed if we need to connect, even temporarily, our TBolt only storage device to a non-TBolt machine aren't we.

In my own case, I have a 2 year old unibody MBPro, but I need to get some serious storage now (or in the near future, at least). Ideally, I'd really love to get into the "future thing" by getting a TBolt storage device now (the Pegasus being the only option, this side of xmas it seems!), and then upgrade to a new machine next year when I can afford to do so.

Why do the tech companies not understand what people actually want here. Just about everyone I know who wants to get something TBolt related feels annoyed and let-down by their complete lack of understanding the current user needs.

Is there some other, perhaps technical, reason for not including other ports on these storage devices?

Yours perplexed. :-S

 

[jsolares]

re. price increases:
So the price increase is completely down to Thailand floods then, and nothing else?
Surely there are other production bases out there; is Thailand really that important that the whole market is having drive commodity prices go up by up (even as much as 100%, as one of you said) because of them?

If so, does anyone know the market analysts' views on how long would one would estimate before such things come down again — a month, up to 3 months, up to 6 months, longer?


re. ports/connections:
I understand this is the "future thing", but I still don't understand the premise of giving only one kind of connection, it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to the average user, and is even a deterrent to upgrading to it.

Say (like I do) you have an older unibody MBPro machine that comes with non-TBolt ports. Or you have one machine that has TBolt and another that doesn't. Or a backup machine that's a bit older and doesn't have TBolt.
In all of these cases, we're stuffed if we need to connect, even temporarily, our TBolt only storage device to a non-TBolt machine aren't we.

In my own case, I have a 2 year old unibody MBPro, but I need to get some serious storage now (or in the near future, at least). Ideally, I'd really love to get into the "future thing" by getting a TBolt storage device now (the Pegasus being the only option, this side of xmas it seems!), and then upgrade to a new machine next year when I can afford to do so.

Why do the tech companies not understand what people actually want here. Just about everyone I know who wants to get something TBolt related feels annoyed and let-down by their complete lack of understanding the current user needs.

Is there some other, perhaps technical, reason for not including other ports on these storage devices?

Yours perplexed. :-S

There are several other devices that provide other connectivity options, you could use those, i think the way thunderbolt is made it makes it very hard to implement other kinds of connections parallel to it.

HDD prices might come down in a couple of months but maybe even longer, not sure if the water levels are already back to normal.

 

[iVoid]

What really sucks is I was just about to purchase one now that I've got a TB compatible mac to use. Then I looked at the Apple store and got this surprise.

I was also kind of hoping they'd dd 3TB drives too before I had to buy. Double

Ironically, I've found some cheap Hitachi 3TB drives (actually cheaper than 2TB drives now) and was hoping to get by with them for now, but they are really flaky. Keep locking up the USB bus. Lion also won't encrypt 3TB drives, so I'm returning them.

I doubt Sonnet will be any cheaper and Lacie doesn't have the massive storage capacity I want (sick of all the little drives all over the place and just want one redundant raid to handle all my large media needs).

 

[Eddyisgreat]

So the price increase is completely down to Thailand floods then, and nothing else?
Surely there are other production bases out there; is Thailand really that important that the whole market is having drive commodity prices go up (even as much as 100%, as one of you said) because of them?

If so, does anyone know the market analysts' views on how long would one would estimate before such things come down again — a month, up to 3 months, up to 6 months, longer?

You can't really underestimate the impact that the flooding had on the HDD industry. Many major OEMs had a majority of their production base in thailand. Seagate was I believe the only vendor that did not have facilities in the area, however, there was a major part vendor for HDD motors or something that also got flooded, end result is that production is stifled due to component shortage.

OEMs will get the bulk of the remaining drives and any new stock; they make the most money and have the best relationships with manuf (obviously). Pegasus, Lacie and other external disk makers will have to pass on the extra costs to consumers. They put in the same bare disks as do us regular users, but don't command the quantity like a pc vendor would.

You can see the price jumps for many products at camel egg.com. For a Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB (http://camelegg.com/product/N82E16822136792), one of my personal favorites, the lowest price was $129.99 back in July. The price changed somewhat but shot up after the flooding. Current pricing is $279.99, and they put a 2 per customer limit on them.

I'd say it'd be at least 6 months if not more before the supply chain gets back in order and returns to previous production levels.

 

[elliotn]

What really sucks is I was just about to purchase one now that I've got a TB compatible mac to use. Then I looked at the Apple store and got this surprise.

I'd been considering a Promise Pegasus for months, and last week I finally decided to buy the R6 12TB.

I was shocked to see Apple's 35%/£500 price - whilst aware that bare drives were escalating in price (massively here in the UK - 200%, 300%...), I figured Apple might try to fix the price on a unit that many regarded as over-priced.

Someone suggested I look for other retailers online, and, bingo, I was able to find the R6 12TB for less than Apple's original price (£1378).

So if you want one, get searching now.

 

[iVoid]

I'd been considering a Promise Pegasus for months, and last week I finally decided to buy the R6 12TB.

I was shocked to see Apple's 35%/£500 price - whilst aware that bare drives were escalating in price (massively here in the UK - 200%, 300%...), I figured Apple might try to fix the price on a unit that many regarded as over-priced.

Someone suggested I look for other retailers online, and, bingo, I was able to find the R6 12TB for less than Apple's original price (£1378).

So if you want one, get searching now.

Already ordered it (R6 12TB) today from a vendor my company uses. Got a price in line with the old price, so I'm good to go. Would still love a model with 3TB drives, but 8TB online (RAID6) will last me for a while. (I hope )

 

[Paulywauly]

I read an industry analyst saying somewhere HD prices may actually increase even further in the short term, and may not settle back to pre-thailand flood prices till late 2012 bad luck for those of us out there in need of extra storage!

 

[calderone]

Ouch. That is a big jump. But as others said, it seems to be inline with the industry response.

 

[alq]

Thank god I got my R6 before the flooding....

alq.

 

[old-wiz]

With the production in Thailand down for quite a while, the other manufacturers will simply raise prices. Hard drives have reached commodity status, and if there are fewer drives available then the prices will go up and keep going up.

One wonders why so many factories are located where they are prone to damage from simple floods. And why factories aren't dispersed more.

 

[thekev]

There are several other devices that provide other connectivity options, you could use those, i think the way thunderbolt is made it makes it very hard to implement other kinds of connections parallel to it.

HDD prices might come down in a couple of months but maybe even longer, not sure if the water levels are already back to normal.

I'd say second half of 2012 as a best guess. It's not instantaneous.

What really sucks is I was just about to purchase one now that I've got a TB compatible mac to use. Then I looked at the Apple store and got this surprise.

I was also kind of hoping they'd dd 3TB drives too before I had to buy. Double

Ironically, I've found some cheap Hitachi 3TB drives (actually cheaper than 2TB drives now) and was hoping to get by with them for now, but they are really flaky. Keep locking up the USB bus. Lion also won't encrypt 3TB drives, so I'm returning them.

I doubt Sonnet will be any cheaper and Lacie doesn't have the massive storage capacity I want (sick of all the little drives all over the place and just want one redundant raid to handle all my large media needs).

Not all computers can properly address drives of that size. I'm pretty sure you need one of the systems built on 64 bit hardware to do so. 3TB drives probably sell more slowly, so they may have purchased these at a lower rate previous to the flooding. You may see more thunderbolt enclosures next year.

 

[BornAgainMac]

Well, I promise I won't buy one then.

 

[jimthing]

Some good responses. Very bloody annoying, if one wants some serious storage right now/near future! :-(

I thought all Macs capable of Lion can easily address these 3TB drives?
OS X operating system can address upto 16 exabytes can't it... ?

 

[HelveticaRoman]

Ironic that these products, designed for safety and back-up, are all manufactured in a single place.

 

[iVoid]

I thought all Macs capable of Lion can easily address these 3TB drives?
OS X operating system can address upto 16 exabytes can't it... ?

Macs can address 3TB (and larger) drives just fine.

The problem is some drive enclosures don't handle the larger drives and 4k sectors yet. It's a hardware limitation with the chipset/hardware.

Also, Filevault2 and SecureDOc don't work with 4k sectors either. I assume Apple with fix the 4k issue before they start shipping Macs with 4k sector drives (or some people trying to use Filevault2 will be very surprised).